"Today, about 30 percent of the public thinks the Earth is being visited by aliens in saucers, despite the evidence of that being very poor," Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute — a nonprofit research center focused on the search for alien life in the universe — told Live Science. "I think the moon landing had something to do with that."

I think the moon landing did affect the public perception of extraterrestrial life. Up until then, rockets and so forth were just science fiction. But the Apollo missions showed that you could travel from one world to another on a rocket — and maybe aliens could, too. I think that, from the public's point of view, this meant that going to the stars wasn't always going to be just fiction. Suddenly, the universe was a little more open. - Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute